


Trying to Drink Whiskey (From a Bottle of Wine)

by SegaBarrett



Category: Rocketman (2019)
Genre: Character is too devoted to say no, M/M, One Night Stands, Sexual Relationship as Unhealthy Coping Mechanism
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-14
Updated: 2020-09-14
Packaged: 2021-03-07 04:09:01
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,170
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26466976
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SegaBarrett/pseuds/SegaBarrett
Summary: Elton is spiraling. Bernie wants to help.
Relationships: Elton John/Bernie Taupin
Comments: 4
Kudos: 20
Collections: Darkest Night 2020





	Trying to Drink Whiskey (From a Bottle of Wine)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [ApexOnHigh](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ApexOnHigh/gifts).



> Disclaimer: I don't know Bernie and Elton in real life and as far as I know, this didn't happen. I don't own Rocketman either.
> 
> A/N: Title from "Honky Cat" of course :)

Bernie could have kicked himself later for not picking up the signs. All of the signs.

He could have denoted them, numbered them, like he would with lyrics. Stanza 1, page 1, here’s the rhyme and here’s the hook.

_Here’s the bridge._

_Here is the steeple._

_Open the door, and see Bernie trying to figure out what the hell his next move is going to be._

Because he should have seen the signs.

Not Elton’s signs, not exactly. But the signs from the universe – the signs that everything was set to go to hell in a handbasket.

He should have seen the signs.

***

Elton was walking off stage – walking swiftly, without stopping, walking past Bernie without even looking at him.

That was the way he tended to do it – he would bound off the stage still in that untouchable persona, still the star.

It always seemed to take him a while to come back down to Earth and be a person again. Bernie had wondered, sometimes, what it felt like. Was it the lights that changed him, or the crowd? What kind of a transformation happened up there, exactly?

He didn’t know, nor did he have any idea how to ask him.

Or any idea how to help.

“Elton, wait up,” Bernie managed, finally, turning to walk after him, a movement which quickly turned into a jog instead, as Elton was disappearing behind… disappearing into… disappearing. 

He quickened his step and managed to lay a hand on the back of his friend’s sequined white coat, curl his tips around the shoulder.

“How are you?” he asked. “Hold up. Where are you even rushing off to?”

Elton turned his head and shook it a little, as if he hadn’t quite heard him and needed to clear his ears.

“To… the afterparty,” Elton replied, “Where am I always rushing off to?” He let out a hollow chuckle.

“Wait,” Bernie said, squeezing the hand that was still, he realized, on Elton’s shoulder. “Why not spend some time with me? I mean, I know I can’t compare with a big star-studded party, but…” He hated how pathetic that really sounded, but he couldn’t shake the feeling, creeping up his arm, into his heart, that if he didn’t pull Elton back in (back in to where?) that he was never going to get another chance. So if being pathetic did it, maybe that was the answer.

Elton hesitated.

“They’ll be waiting for me.”

Bernie let his hand slide down to Elton’s wrist and gently pulled him towards him. He didn’t want to let him go. Not this time.

“I’m waiting for you, too.” He tried not to sound like he was pleading, tried not to sound like he was going to cry.

“Bernie, I need to… let off some steam. I need to do some things… the kind of things that… are not exactly in your… uh, wheelhouse.”

“What if they were?”

He blurted it out before he could measure it, before he had even a prayer of stopping himself.

Elton looked at him and blinked, then chuckled.

“Bernie, what are you talking about? You made it very clear that blokes aren’t your cup of tea, and that’s fine. So you can stop trying to save me from myself and you can,” he lowered his voice and leaned in to Bernie’s ear to hiss into it, “Get out of my way.”

“No,” Bernie replied, and without thinking about it – without letting himself think about it – he leaned forward and pressed a kiss to Elton’s lips.

There was something about it – something odd, something that was calling to him and pushing him away all at once.

Elton held the moment between them for longer than Bernie could fathom – as if he had paused, had maybe shut down and needed to be restarted. 

“Let’s walk, then,” Elton said, finally, and Bernie let himself deflate, let all of the air out at last.

They walked.

***

They kept the lights down in the hotel room when they entered, and chose instead to drift to the bed as if they had a homing signal driving them there, letting them know where they should land.

Bernie’s heart was beating so fast that he was sure that something was wrong, that something had to be desperately wrong. Maybe he would pass out and then this would all be over – he would awake in the morning and nothing would have changed between Elton and him.

He never would have stepped across the chasm, or saw how far down it really went.

Instead, Elton bridged the gap, and this time he was the one placing his lips to Bernie’s. If he felt the thump-thump-pause-thump-thump of Bernie’s heart, he didn’t say anything about it, and a moment later they had both fallen back on to the bed.

Bernie wondered what it would feel like to be one of Elton’s secret partners in the night. To never exchange names – on Elton’s side, he wouldn’t even need to, there was no one who wouldn’t recognize him by now, they had all seen to that – to simply crash in the night and roll over and run away in the morning and never speak of it again, to only have the traces on his lips, on his fingers, on his hips.

_Maybe that would be better – because I will need to look at Elton tomorrow and Elton will need to look back at me and that is when I will know if I have failed or not._

There was no success in the equation, of course – only failure, or not.

He placed a hand on the small of Elton’s back and breathed in his scent – something musky that he couldn’t quite place. He wondered what it was that he smelled like, and if it was something that Elton liked smelling.

Elton broke away a second and examined Bernie with a critical eye, cocking his head to the side a little as if trying to figure out something. Bernie rose and began to pace.

“Are you sure that you want to do this?” he asked. “You’re not just thinking that you have to…”

“I do. Want to.” Bernie wouldn’t be given an out; he refused to let him go. “Let’s just… get started.” It was a little hard to stand upright, a little hard to keep his gaze straight. “You might just need to… tell me what to do.”

 _Please tell me what to do,_ he pleaded in his mind, _please tell me if this is the right thing or I’m just under your spell, if I’m just desperate._

“Well… we probably want to start back on the bed,” Elton said, with a smile that seemed nervous, too – or maybe Bernie was just projecting.

Bernie climbed on to the bed, pulling the sheets up and over, wondering whether he should climb underneath him. He felt self-conscious in a way he never had before – wondering if the lights would reveal every imperfection and make Elton turn his back and leave. As terrifying as it was to do this – to open himself up in this way – it was far more terrifying not to, and to allow Elton to walk away and leave him here alone. He scanned his body in his mind, wondering what he had overlooked.

Elton didn’t seem to have the same reluctance. He gave a gentle pull on Bernie’s shirt, first, and yanked it free, and Bernie felt the cold air hit his chest. 

This was probably all a mistake, had to be a mistake, but something was telling him that he needed to be here – if he was here and Elton was here, Elton wasn’t out in some unknown, wasn’t out in some bar getting hammered and maybe left by the side of the road, maybe being hurt by someone somewhere in some undefinable but, suddenly, very real way.

His pants were unbuttoned, and Bernie rolled his head on his neck ever so slightly, wishing he had thought to get a drink before this – maybe that would kill the nerves, maybe that would – why was he thinking about this like he was being marched out to some firing squad? It was him who had asked for this, after all – and he loved Elton. He did. That should make it easy.

That should make it as quick as easy as tumbling around with a pretty girl at the end of a school dance – that had never seemed all that difficult. But it had never been this… major, either.

He would like to say that this wasn’t him. He would like to say that…

But there wasn’t really time to say much of anything, because there were fingers all over him and he was moaning, leaning into Elton’s touch, trying to toss every fear and every voice in his head to the back.

He was climbing the hill of a rollercoaster, and there was no way to get off – and the only way to go was down.

Maybe he should let himself enjoy the ride.

***

Bernie opened one eye, then the other. His body tingled, and he felt like a bell that had been rung. What, exactly, had he done last night?

It was after that thought – a relatively innocent one, if he were to really try and examine it – that he rolled over and found himself lying next to Elton, who was still sleeping and was completely naked.

Bernie looked down and found that, at some point, he had half-pulled his own pants half up, but didn’t really remember much after that. Until he moved. It was as if each part of his body – his arms, crooked to recall the way his hands had sifted through Elton’s hair, the way his legs had clasped around him, the way his mouth… - each part of his body was reminding him of things his memory wasn’t ready for him to hear just yet.

He wondered if he should jostle Elton awake, but wasn’t sure what that would accomplish other than having a conversation that he wasn’t ready to have, a conversation that he had no clue how to begin. Maybe he just needed Elton to be in the moment with him? But what sense did that even make – any weirdness about this had to be his alone, unless Elton regretted sleeping with Bernie because of… well, maybe Bernie wasn’t good enough or something.

That possibility offended him far more than he felt it ought to have.

He rolled his legs closer to his middle, hugging them and letting out a sigh. They would have to talk about this. They would have to say something about this. Bernie would explode if things just went back to normal – what was normal, anyway? Elton getting trashed tomorrow night? Unless he committed himself to doing… this… again and again, if Elton even wanted him to? The novelty would wear off in the end.

He slipped into the little bathroom at the edge of the hotel room, his feet slipping along behind him like they didn’t want to be along for the ride. He tried to control his breathing; tried to understand where it had all gone wrong. Because somehow, it had gone wrong.

He locked the door behind him and started running water – it was a smooth, gentle sound, and Bernie let himself remember waterfalls he had seen hiking, one upon a time, and the way that the rocks had felt underneath his feet. Anything, to stop the feeling that he was being swept away.

He examined his chest in the mirror and ran a finger along a hickey on his neck, a bite mark just above his nipple. He let his pants fall completely to find the marks on his hips, little finger marks and nail marks. All red.

He wondered what kind of marks he had left on Elton, and was too numb to consider how he really felt about that, but not too numb to remember the way the bed had squeaked, the way they both had moaned.

The way his body, now, was clenching not in fear or regret, but anticipation. In wanting to do it all over again.

Bernie jumped into the shower, pulled his pants back on and slipped out. Found a loose TV shirt in the closet and pulled it on before turning to see that Elton had moved to sit on the edge of the bed and was yawning and rubbing the sleep from his eyes.

“Good morning,” Bernie chirped. “You want some tea? I could put some on…”

“I’d love some tea. Thank you,” Elton said, then hesitated, “About last night…”

“It’s nothing.”

“We shouldn’t. Again. I mean… It’s complicated…”

“Oh, way too complicated.”

“Should we talk about…”

“Oh, no need,” Bernie blurted, “It was just a thing that happened. It was just… the moment.”

“The moment,” Elton echoed. 

They looked at each other for a long time.

“Tea?” Bernie asked. He drifted into the kitchen. 

He could hear Elton’s voice echoing in the air.

“Sure, tea.”


End file.
